Craft Cardboard "Resurrection" Eggs . . .

Cardboard 'Resurrection' eggs displayed on thorny shrubs.

        These cardboard eggs are both simpler and more economical for young children to assemble than the version I have described at my Easter blog. I have also included a variety of butterflies and a moth below that young students may print out on their home computers.
       To make cardboard eggs like these you will need the following supplies: cardboard, an egg pattern, decorative scrap papers, white school glue, small twigs collected from outdoors, green acrylic paints, a few cotton balls, string for hanging, a chenille stem and butterfly/moth clip art.

Left, shaping pupa with cotton on a chenille stem. Right, the chrysalis/pupa still need green paint.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Cut out the egg shape from scrap cardboard.
2. Cover both the front and back of this egg with scrapbook papers. Some children may wish to choose to cover their backgrounds with a sky blue paper or a photo of the sky with clouds from a magazine. Other children may choose to interpret their "resurrection'' eggs with more artistic license and select any kind of decorative paper for this vignette. Either choice is fine as long as parents or teachers teach the symbolic meaning associated with the transformation story. I've included links to these below.
3. Cut out a butterfly or moth to paste onto the egg. Alternatively, teachers could purchase butterfly stickers for the craft in advance to stick onto the egg.
4. Now puddle the glue and adhere a small twig to the egg. Let dry.
   
5. Cut a one inch segment of the chenille stem. Bend one end piece of this stem slightly.
6. Unravel the cotton ball, only one of these per student will be necessary if that much.
7. Squeeze a tiny bit of glue along the bristly edge of the cut stem and wrap the stem with the cotton batting. Repeat this step until the stem is shaped to look like a chrysalis, the pupa of a butterfly or moth. If you feel this method is a bit too fussy for very young children: you could shape this pupa from air dry clay or find a photo of the butterfly chrysalis to print and paste onto the egg.
8. Puddle the glue a bit to get the pupa/chrysalis to stick to the cardboard surface.
   
9. Brush on Mod Podge coating last to preserve the egg surface, twig and chrysalis.
10. Punch a hole into the egg, to string a twine or ribbon through it so that little ones may hang the egg in a display or on an egg tree.
    
    

    

    See the cotton batting chrysalis up close.
    

    
    

    

    More versions of Resurrection eggs with the butterfly symbol.
    

     

What do caterpillars, butterflies, eggs and pupa have to do with the Resurrection?

• The story behind the butterfly often told in Christian churches, families and communities... and the second half of the story here. 
  

 Butterflies and Moth Clip Art: resize these as needed...

• Vintage Butterfly Clip Art - most of these are yellow